Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters belong to J.K. Rowling. I am merely borrowing them.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
MUGGLE
Epilogue
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
--Alan Kay:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Petunia, awake in bed that night as Vernon snored peacefully beside her, saw that fateful day in her mind as vividly as if she were still there, Lily's pale, mud-spattered face receding into the distance. At last she slipped from the bed and gently, so gently, took the box containing the crystal ball from the closet.
As she passed Dudley's door she peeked in; her son slept silently and peacefully, his blanket clutched in one hand and bunched around his arm. She set the box down and went to straighten it out, but her foot bumped the basket on the floor where Harry slept, his tiny face furrowed.
Raise him as your own, Dumbledore's letter said. Petunia's insides writhed. So presumptuous, that man, so completely self-assured that everyone would do exactly what he wanted… the first letter she had received from him, years ago, had simply said, Just in case, and inside the brown box that accompanied the letter, the crystal ball.
She fixed Dudley's blanket, settling a soft kiss on his forehead. He mumbled softly in his sleep and Petunia smiled. She crept out of his room, ignoring Harry's soft whimper from his basket on the floor, and went downstairs with the box tucked under her arm.
Leaving the lights off in case someone passed by and saw her, Petunia pulled the top from the box and sat down on her spotless sofa. The spicy incense wafting from the silk scarf covering it seemed out of place in the tidy Muggle living room.
Petunia wondered what she was doing—but before she could think another thought about it, her hands were caressing the smooth crystal and lifting the ball from its box.
Harry Potter.
Her lips formed the words silently, and the familiar mist rose around her. It had been so long, it was almost a relief. So long she had not dared to use the thing! So long she had buried every hint of magic around her, telling no one but Vernon and him only when he asked why she disliked her sister coming to visit.
The clarity of the vision surprised her—a boy with untidy black hair and glasses, a boy she recognized immediately by the ugly scar marring his forehead and, more shockingly, by his bottle-green eyes. Petunia's breath stopped in her chest as she met those eyes in her vision, so like Lily's they were. Time would only strengthen the resemblance.
With another wrench she realized where he was—Hogwarts. He wore the uniform, smiling widely and clutching a wand in one hand. A white owl swooped down and landed on his outstretched arm, and he spoke to it softly as it preened the gorgeous white feathers.
No, Petunia thought desperately. No, no, no.
She tried to thrust the crystal ball away, but it was not done yet. Harry, or what would someday be Harry, disappeared into the mists, and another face swam before her own, one that to this day haunted her nightmares and had terrified her into cutting all ties with Lily for fear that she herself would be killed too.
Through the green mists Lord Voldemort's snakelike eyes peered down at her, and he spoke—"The Dark Lord will rise again!"
The crystal ball dropped from her fingers and Petunia sat, shaking, on the couch in the familiar house on Privet Drive.
She knew as surely as she knew the sun would rise in the morning that the second vision was a true one—He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would return.
Harry had already escaped him once. Petunia knew that he would not be allowed to escape once more… unless he could be hidden. Hidden as she had hidden, tucked away in the Muggle world with the safety of plain mundane life blanketing her.
"These visions we see, they are only shadows… possibilities. They are not prophecy."
John's words came back to her; she wondered at their truth, when he himself had turned out to be so false. But they had come from the time before he had turned on her; perhaps, they were worth remembering. Perhaps she could change the vision—keep her nephew from dying as her sister had died.
She made her decision in that moment—he must not be allowed to know anything about the wizarding world. He would be kept from attending Hogwarts, even if they sent him one of those damnable letters, and he would be a Muggle through and through. Petunia did not think she could love him—Harry was a reminder of too many things she wished buried forever—but she could keep him alive.
For Lily, she would keep him alive, and hope that however the future came to pass, it would pass him safely by.
She picked the crystal ball up and, grabbing a jacket from the closet under the stairs, went outside. There in the back garden, under the velvet night sky, she quietly buried the crystal beneath the hedge.
It was not until she had put the spade back in the shed and was slipping back inside that she remembered another voice from the past, this time her own:
"What if you See the future and you think something will change it, but it turns out to make the very thing you wanted to avoid happen anyway?"
"That is the risk we take," she said out loud, and went up the stairs and back to bed.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-: